REPUBLIC OF THE PHILIPPINES

PROVINCE OF NORTH COTABATO

MUNICIPALITY OF MAKILALA
MAKILALA INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
CONCEPCION, MAKILALA, COTABATO

Program: Bachelor of Public Administration

Course
PA 223 – POLITICS AND ADMINISTRATION
Number/Title:
Credit: 3 Week #: 13 - 15 (May 30 - June 15)
Instructor: Mr. John Martin P. Alvero

Contact Email: alvero.answers4modules@gmail.com

Information: Messenger: JOHN MARTIN P. ALVERO

General instruction: Read the content of the module carefully. This will help you
understand the topic for each module and will greatly help you answer the
exercises or activities at the end of each module. Each module is assigned within
a specific time period. You are expected to finish the module within the period
allotted. Should you have any queries and clarification regarding the module,
use the contact information available above. Kindly reach the instructor during
working hours from Monday to Friday. Do not forget to be courteous when
addressing your questions.

MODULE VII. UNITED NATIONS DEFINITION OF GOVERNANCE AND

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Overview:
At its fourth session, the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public
Administration recognized that there are some fundamental concepts and
terminologies of governance and public administration that need to be defined
in order that there can be a common understanding of them throughout the
United Nations system. It is acknowledged that often these concepts and
terminologies are not applied in a uniform way. The discussions of the Committee
on this subject will be the beginning of a participatory process in identifying and
defining the major concepts and terminologies at the core of governance and
public administration. The terminologies that are presented in the present paper
are not exhaustive; developed through a brief desk research, they are intended
to provide an initial springboard for the Committee to initiate discussions on these
and related terms. Following the Committee’s comments and guidance, the
research will be extended to expand the inventory and the definitions of the
concepts and terminologies in governance and public administration.

1
 I. LEARNING OUTCOMES:
At the end of this Chapter, you are expected to:
1. define what is governance, good governance, and global governance;
2. define what is public administration;
3. determine what is the new public management;
4. examine the process of capacity development;
5. examine the decentralization of governmental powers from central to
local governments; and
6. identify features of civil society and its functions.

II. TOPICS
Lesson 1: Governance
Lesson 2: Public Administration
Lesson 3: New Public Management
Lesson 4: Capacity Development
Lesson 5: Decentralization
Lesson 6: Civil Society

III. REFERENCES

 Committee of Experts on Public Administration, “Definition of basic concepts and

terminologies in governance and public administration”, Compendium of basic terminology
in governance and public administration, United Nations.

IV. COURSE CONTENT

TOPIC I. GOVERNANCE
The term governance has gained great usage in contemporary public
administration. Many theorists in the field believe that the term governance is an
organizing concept that guides administrators as administrative practices shift
from the bureaucratic State to what is called the “hollow State” or what Osborne
and Gaebler (1993) call “third-party government”. According to Frederickson
and Smith, “Governance refers to the lateral and inter-institutional relations in
administration in the context of the decline of sovereignty, the decreasing
importance of jurisdictional borders and a general institutional fragmentation”.
Frederickson and Smith assert further that, with more emphasis on governance,
“the administrative state is now less bureaucratic, less hierarchical and less reliant
on central authority to mandate action. Accountability for conducting the
public’s business is increasingly about performance rather than discharging a
specific policy goal with the confines of the law”.

The use of the terms governance and public administration gained

unprecedented momentum in both their quest and usage in the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. However, as the twenty-first century gets under way, there
does not seem to be a consensus as to what they mean. In a highly dynamic

2
environment, politically, socially, economically, and culturally, these terms mean
different things in different contexts.

DEFINING GOVERNANCE
Towards the end of the twentieth century, the term governance gained the
prominent attention of donor agencies, social scientists, philanthropists and civil
society. This popularity stems from the fact that it can be applied to a wide range
of issues, relationships and institutions involved in the process of managing public
and private affairs. The term governance enlarges and better illustrates what
Governments should be focusing on. In addition, at the end of the cold war, the
usage of the term was revitalized as donor agencies, notably the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Western countries urged the countries of
the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the countries of the developing
world to undertake political, economic and administrative reforms and to
practice good governance. The conceptualization of the term does not,
however, seem to have been consistent, and it has generated various definitions
and meanings, as shown below.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in its 1997 policy paper,
defined governance as “the exercise of economic, political and administrative
authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels. It comprises the mechanisms,
processes and institutions through which citizens and groups articulate their
interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations and mediate their
differences”. This definition was endorsed by the Secretary-General’s inter-
agency sub-task force to promote integrated responses to United Nations
conferences and summits. Over the past 10 years, the number of country level
programs on governance supported by the United Nations system has expanded
considerably.

In 1993, the World Bank defined governance as the method through which power
is exercised in the management of a country’s political, economic and social
resources for development. While the World Bank has focused on stabilization and
State reforms that overwhelmingly focused on civil service retrenchment and
privatization for a long period, the early 1990s saw a change of focus. The Bank
came to realize that most of the crises in developing countries are of a
governance nature. Hence, the contemporary adjustment package emphasizes
governance issues such as transparency, accountability and judicial reform. In
this context, the Bank has introduced a new way of looking at governance; good
governance.

According to Jon Pierre, “governance refers to sustaining coordination and

coherence among a wide variety of actors with different purposes and
objectives”. Such actors may include political actors and institutions, interest
groups, civil society, non-governmental and transnational organizations. This
definition illustrates that while the government of a traditional State has to cope
with internal challenges and external challenges from the above actors, some of
the functions previously the preserve of government may be taken over some of
the same parties. This definition gives credence to the assertion made earlier that
governance is broader than government.

3
While Pierre’s definition of governance is society-centric, Peters and Pierre offer a
definition of the term that is more State-centric. Even as they concede that
“governance relates to changing relationships between State and society and a
growing reliance on less coercive policy instruments” they assert that “the State is
still the center of considerable political power”. They perceive governance as
“processes in which the State plays a leading role, making priorities and defining
objectives”. This is in line with the notion of the role of the State as that of “steering”
society and the economy.

Hirst offers a more general definition of the term. He asserts that “governance can
be generally defined as the means by which an activity or ensemble of activities
is controlled or directed, such that it delivers an acceptable range of outcomes
according to some established standard”.

Canada’s Institute of Governance (2002) offers another general definition,

asserting that “Governance is the process whereby societies or organizations
make important decisions, determine whom they involve and how they render
account”.

GOOD GOVERNANCE
According to the World Bank, good governance entails sound public sector
management (efficiency, effectiveness and economy), accountability,
exchange and free flow of information (transparency), and a legal framework for
development (justice, respect for human rights and liberties).

In seeming agreement with the World Bank, the Overseas Development

Administration of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (now
the Department for International Development), defines good governance by
focusing on four major components namely legitimacy (government should have
the consent of the governed); accountability (ensuring transparency, being
answerable for actions and media freedom); competence (effective
policymaking, implementation and service delivery); and respect for law and
protection of human rights.

According to Surendra Munshi, good governance “signifies a participative

manner of governing that functions in a responsible, accountable and
transparent manner based on the principles of efficiency, legitimacy and
consensus for the purpose of promoting the rights of individual citizens and the
public interest, thus indicating the exercise of political will for ensuring the material
welfare of society and sustainable development with social justice”.

A more succinct definition of good governance is offered by Hirst who propounds

that it “means creating an effective political framework conducive to private
economic action: stable regimes, the rule of law, efficient State administration
adapted to the roles that Governments can actually perform and a strong civil
society independent of the State”.

4
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE
Thomas G. Weiss, director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at
the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, defines “global
governance” as “collective efforts to identify, understand or address worldwide
problems that go beyond the capacity of individual States to solve”. He asserts
that global governance may be defined as “the complex of formal and informal
institutions, mechanisms, relationships, and processes between and among
States, markets, citizens and organizations, both inter- and non-governmental,
through which collective interests on the global plane are articulated, rights and
obligations are established, and differences are mediated”.

In 2005, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi defined global governance as “the activities

and processes of government and governing located at several different
government levels; that is local, national, regional and global”. The term
governance has numerous concepts and principles associated with it.

TOPIC II. PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Public administration has many definitions. According to some authors, public

administration is centrally concerned with the organization of government
policies and programs as well as the behavior of officials (usually non-elected)
formally responsible for their conduct.

Other specialists in the field define public administration as all processes,

organizations and individuals (the latter acting in official positions and roles)
associated with carrying out laws and other rules adopted or issued by
legislatures, executives and courts. Other parties assert that public administration
is the use of managerial, political and legal theories and processes to fulfil
legislative, executive and judicial mandates for the provision of government
regulatory and service functions.

According to UNDP, public administration has two closely related meanings:

(a) The aggregate machinery (policies, rules, procedures, systems,

organizational structures, personnel and so forth) funded by the State
budget and in charge of the management and direction of the affairs of
the executive government, and its interaction with other stakeholders in the
State, society and external environment;

(b) The management and implementation of the whole set of government

align with the implementation of laws, regulations and decisions of the
Government and the management related to the provision of public
services.

5
TOPIC III. NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

New public management is a global public management reform movement that

redefines the relationship between Government and society that originated in
Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern
Ireland. Spurred by citizen dissatisfaction with government performance,
endemic fiscal problems and seemingly successful restructuring in the private
arena, calls for public sector reform and reinventing Government became
rampant.

According to Osborne and Gaebler (1993), new public management calls on

Government to focus on achieving results rather than primarily conforming to
procedures and to adopt market-like competition, innovations and
entrepreneurial strategies. In order to be market-like, Government and public
administration generally is called upon to be customer-driven and to rely on
market-based mechanisms to deliver public services. According to some authors,
new public management calls on public administration to change its culture and
be flexible, innovative, problem-solving, entrepreneurial and enterprising, as
opposed to rule-bound, process-oriented and focused on inputs rather than
results.

The contention expressed by supporters of new public management that public

administrators should be conceived as entrepreneurs, seeking opportunities to
create private partnerships and serve customers has come under criticism.
Denhardt argue that “this perspective of the public administrator is narrow and is
poorly suited to achieve democratic principles such as fairness, justice,
participation and the articulation of shared interest”.

PUBLIC SECTOR GOVERNANCE

Public sector governance has been defined as regimes of laws, rules, judicial
decisions and administrative practices that constrain, prescribe, and enable the
provision of publicly supported goods and services. In this definition, constitutional
institutions are linked to the realities of policymaking and public management.

DEMOCRACY
The UNDP Human Development Report, 2002 stated that “For politics and political
institutions to promote human development and safeguard the freedom and
dignity of all people, democracy must widen and deepen”. “Democracy”, as
defined in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org), “in its ideal sense is the notion that
‘the people’ should have control of the government ruling over them. This ideal is
pursued by implementing a system of voting such that the majority of people rule,
either directly or indirectly through elected representatives. Democracies may be
‘liberal’, where fundamental rights of individuals in the minority are protected by
law, or they may be ‘illiberal’ where they are not. Democracy is often
implemented as a form of government in which policy is decided by the
preference of the real majority (as opposed to a partial or relative majority of the
demos/citizens) in a decision-making process, usually elections or referenda,
open to all”.

6
According to Elgstrom and Hyden, democracy is system of government with the
following attributes:

(a) There are institutions and procedures through which citizens can express
effective preferences about alternative policies at the national level and
there are institutionalized constraints on the exercise of power by the
executive (competition);

(b) There exists inclusive suffrage and a right of participation in the selection
of national leaders and policies (inclusiveness/participation).

Larry Diamond uses the maximalist definition of democracy as encompassing

“not only a civilian, constitutional, multiparty regime, with regular, free and fair
elections and universal suffrage, but organizational and informational pluralism;
extensive civil liberties (freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to
form and join organizations); effective power for elected officials; and functional
autonomy for legislative, executive and judicial organs of government.

DEMOCRATIC GOVERNANCE
Some consider democracy as a set of values and governance as a process of
interaction among three sets of actors, from the State, civil society and the private
sector, which implies governance based on fundamental and universally
accepted principles, including: participation, accountability, transparency, rule
of law, separation of powers, access, subsidiarity, equality and freedom of the
press.

PUBLIC SECTOR REFORM

According to other sources, public sector reform consists of deliberate changes
to the structures and processes of public sector organizations with the objective
of getting them to run better. Structural change may include merging or splitting
public sector organizations while process change may include redesigning
systems, setting quality standards and focusing on capacity-building.

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM

Civil service reform, which implies developing the capacity of the civil service to
fulfil its mandate, defined to include issues of recruitment and promotion, pay,
number of employees, performance appraisal and related matters, still
constitutes the main part of national programs for public administration reform.
Civil service reform has historically focused on the need to contain the costs of
public sector employment through retrenchment and restructuring, but has
broadened towards focusing on the longer-term goal of creating a government
workforce of the right size, with the appropriate mix of skills, and the right
motivation, professional ethos, client focus and accountability.

7
TOPIC IV. CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT

Capacity development is the process by which individuals, organizations,

institutions and societies develop abilities to perform functions, solve problems
and set and achieve objectives. It needs to be addressed at three inter-related
levels: individual, institutional and societal. “Specifically, capacity-building
encompasses the country’s human, scientific, technological, organizational,
institutional, and resource capabilities. A fundamental goal of capacity-building
is to enhance the ability to evaluate and address the crucial questions related to
policy choices and modes of implementation among development options,
based on an understanding of environment potentials and limits and of needs
perceived by the people of the country concerned”.

UNDP recognizes that capacity-building is a long-term, continuing process, in

which all stakeholders participate (ministries, local authorities, non-governmental
organizations and water user groups, professional associations, academics and
others). In 1991, UNDP and the International Institute for Hydraulic and
Environmental Engineering organized a symposium entitled “A strategy for water
sector capacity-building” in Delft, the Netherlands, during which delegates from
developing countries and supporting institutes defined capacity-building as: (a)
the creation of an enabling environment with appropriate policy and legal
frameworks; (b) institutional development, including community participation (of
women in particular); and (c) human resources development and strengthening
of managerial systems.

At the individual level, capacity-building involves establishing the conditions

under which public servants are able to embark on a continuous process of
learning and adapting to change — building on existing knowledge and skills and
enhancing and using them in new directions. This requires a new approach to
human resources management and also points to the importance of knowledge
management as the new vehicle for increased learning. At the institutional level,
a similar approach needs to be applied. Rather than creating new institutions,
often based on foreign blueprints, support should focus on the modernization of
their machinery, with a priority on systems and processes. In this process, capacity
development for policy support, organizational effectiveness and revenue and
expenditure management is crucial. Finally, capacity development at the
societal level is required to support the paradigm of a more interactive public
administration that learns equally from its actions and from the feedback it
receives from the population at large. In order for public administration to be seen
as a responsive and accountable service provider, whose performance needs to
be monitored, societal change is required.

TOPIC V. DECENTRALIZATION

In governance and public administration, decentralization is commonly regarded

as a process through which powers, functions, responsibilities and resources are
transferred from central to local governments and/or to other decentralized
entities. In practical terms, decentralization is a process of striking a balance

8
between the claims of the periphery and the demands of the center.
Decentralization, when appropriately structured, provides an arrangement
through which critical issues (such as those of national unity and indivisibility, how
to safeguard national interests and ensure coordinated and even development,
equity in the distribution of resources, diversity, and local autonomy) can be
reconciled. Many countries have made efforts to decentralize their political and
administrative systems. These efforts have met with varying degrees of vigor and
success because each country responds in its own way to unprecedented
changes and challenges in its administrative and political performance.

Decentralization is a broad concept that can be both a means to improve the

efficiency and effectiveness of public services as well as a way to promote the
broader values of pluralistic, participatory democracy. It implies transfer of
political, financial, administrative and legal authority from central government to
regional/subnational and local governments. Different forms of decentralization
can be distinguished based on the extent to which power and authority is being
transferred and/or the type of authority being transferred or devolved, for
example: deconcentration from central government departments to local
offices; delegation to semi-autonomous organizations; devolution to local
governments; or transfer to non-governmental organizations.

In the view of one specialist in the field, decentralization refers to the restructuring
or reorganization of governmental authority in such a manner as to establish a
system of co-responsibility between institutions of governance at the central,
regional and local levels according to the principle of subsidiarity, thus increasing
overall quality and effectiveness of the system of governance while increasing
the authority and capacities of subnational levels.

TOPIC VI. CIVIL SOCIETY

Civil society is a vital component of governance and decentralization, the one

component that is supposed to vigilantly hold those in power accountable and
to promote democracy. Simply put, civil society is that sphere of action
independent of the State, within the realm of private sector and civil
organizations, capable of stimulating resistance to and change in undemocratic
regimes.

Patrick Chabal, in reference to African civil society, defines it as “a vast ensemble

of constantly changing groups and individuals (who have) acquired some
consciousness of their externality and opposition to the state”. It should be noted,
however, that while civil society is an agent of change, it does not necessarily
have to be in opposition to the State, especially if the latter practices good
governance.

According to Diamond, civil society is the realm of organized social life that is
voluntary, self-generating, self-supporting, autonomous from the State and bound
by a legal or shared set of rules. (Denhardt and Denhardt) put it succinctly when
they asserted that “civil society is one place where citizens can engage one

9
another in the kind of personal dialogue and deliberation that is the essence not
only of community building, but of democracy itself”.

CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS

Civil society organizations include non-governmental organizations, professional
and private sector associations and trade unions. They also include families,
churches, neighborhood groups, social groups and work groups. Indeed the
capability and strength of civil society depends on the operation of such
organizations. Civil society organizations take on various roles and responsibilities,
among them supplementing the functions normally performed by political parties
such as interest articulation and popular mobilization, recruiting and training new
political leaders and disseminating information and holding Governments
accountable.

In a recent publication, civil society organizations are seen as capable of

performing various functions, among them, generating a democratic transition
by altering the balance of power between society and State, organizing
opposition against the State, articulating interests of groups in society, recruiting
leaders who are prepared to overthrow the non-democratic regime and
providing information, which may inspire citizens to protest against the regime.

10